


Purple Doves

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Competition, F/F, Gymnastics, Olympics, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 22:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5887708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail is the favored gymnasts to win that years Olympics, Anya is the unforeseen challenger from the USSR, Abby is drawn to the girl for her unusual stature</p><p>For the anon prompt: fsf prompt: fem!rusame gymnasts AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Doves

Abigail wouldn’t say she was _obsessed_ , obsessed was a strong word, like _hate_ or _very_ , it tasted heavy on the tongue, no she would say interested.

It had piqued her interest.

The girl was tall after all, too tall.

Her body shouldn’t bend or lean into the music like a reed against the wind. She shouldn’t move like she was made of rubber bands and feathers instead of bone and cartilage.

Her legs should stiffen and collapse on her, her arms should look like awkward bendy-straws not swan necks that floated around her body.

It wasn’t fair, she was tall, she should not be standing, all 5 feet 8 inches of her on the Olympic floor.

Of course, she wasn’t interested because she was worried, Abigail was certain she would win, she had freedom and democracy on her side--and six less inches.

She was simply intrigued. 

Her eyes fell on the Russian willow almost as much as she watched the actual performances of the other competitors.

Eyes like violets, hands like folded doves on her lap and the red of a bleeding-tyrant flag behind her.

Anya.

She glances around, Australia’s mat routine was going on to an acoustic version of Joy to the World– of all things. She flops a landing, Abigail cringes. She turns back to the left corner of the room.

Pale and doll-like, Anya.

Abigail wanted a closer look. She heard the girl had a foot injury and was dancing on that, 5’8, a foot injury and in the Olympics. 

Abigail loved the idea of an underdog, the little guy who beat the odds, a fairy tale where the giants win gymnastics. The only problem is that they had to be  _heroes_ to do that. Heroes, not an evil ice queen.

And she kinda reminded her of one, pale skin, hair pinned around her head like a crown and lips pursed in a straight pleasant line, like she’s watching a parade at all times, but not an exciting one, just a mildly interesting display.

Abigail crept across the general hall, sliding behind coaches and weeping girls whose scores came back, her team didn’t pay her any attention as she left.

She ducks behind a grouchy English girl to a water cooler. She casually picks up a water and opens it, pretending to just wander a little closer over to the Katerina’s and Sylvania’s of the left corner.

When she is close enough to see their shoes Abby realizes none of them are pale red on slender, long feet.

She blinks several times, she was gone. Anya was–

“Hello.”

Abby jumps, turning quickly towards an intensely close voice, she almost chokes on her water. Clear-dull purple eyes hover inches from her face.

She coughs a couple times as she backs up, Anya laughs at her behind a gloved hand.

“Sorry.” She asserts, not sounding particularly sorry.

“Hello.” Abby wheezes back as she cleared her throat, Anya laughs once more, a tinkling, taunting sound.

“I am,” Anya began in halting English, “Anya Braginski.

Abby nods and deliberately puts her hand out, confidence was key, “Abigail F. Jones.”

Anya takes her hand, it is chilled like an icebox and encases her hand like a bear paw. They shake.

“How tall are you exactly?” Abby spits out, tact never her strong suit. Anya frowns at her.

“Eh, I am,” she fumbles with the words, “172.3.” Then smiles, proud she got it out.

Abby was very confused, 172.3 feet was not a thing, then she hit herself in the head, “oh! Right the bizarre-o measuring system. Centimeters.”  
  
She nods and repeats the word happily, “centi–meters.”

“How tall,” Anya points at her, “are you?”

Abby puffs out her chest, “5’2.” Good for a gymnast.

They both look at each other, simultaneously realizing neither of them knew how big that was in their own countries measurements.

This was getting awkward, Abby coughs into her hand, “and…it’s not hard to do, you know, flips? Since you are huge.”

Anya’s smile it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I like it.”  
  
“The flips?”

She shakes her head, “They say discretion was invented by the English.”

“So?” Abby quirks an eyebrow up.

“I like that Americans seem to not have, eh, inherited that.” She leers at her, it was a jumbled sentence, but Abigail got the message, her face flushes.

“Well, well, I’m glad the Soviets, never inherited winning on the mat floor.” She huffs. If Elizabeth was there she would tell her that her wit was impeccable as ever.

She laughs again, “silly, you don’t need to challenge me. We were already rivals.” She points at her flag and her happy demeanor was getting on Abby’s nerves.

“Freedom beats Stalin any day.” She pouts.

“We’ll see.” She’s still smiling. “Little solnyshko.”

“What are you calling me?”  
  
Her smile widens, “you are, how you say, hot in the head.” She points to her temple.

Abby stands up straighter, electricity passes between them like a thread of light, their eye contact is only broken by a commotion in the middle of the room. Her eyes wander to the score boards, the judges were putting up their numbers for another girl, Sweden she thinks.

She cringes, they were not good numbers, they were comforting her.

“I will see you in, uh, place number two.” She says as she turns around, holding up two fingers. “When we are singing my anthem.”

Abby has so many words to say to her they are all trying to come out at once, but before anything else her coach steamrolls through the crowd towards her.

“Abigail!”

She turns to Anya who was looking to go, “I might be a hot head but at least I don’t just smile like a wolverine trying to convince a sparrow to jump into it’s mouth and te-”  
  
“Abigail.” A strained voice comes up behind her, reprehending her and offering a tight smile to her competition, “are you being _diplomatic_ with our Soviet friends over here?”

Abby darts her eyes around, trying to think of something, “uh,” She smiles, “of course?”

Her coach, Washington, sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose, “come on.” He takes her by the wrist, he nods his head at Anya as they pass, “I’m sorry if she bothered you. Let’s have a good round.”  
  
“No,” Anya shakes her head, “solnyshko was, eh, a good time.” She smiles.

Abby was going to fight her. Before that can take place, she is told to go to her corner and get ready for her performance. It was half an hour away, and then Anya did her routine straight after her.

The pressure was of course, on.

But Abby wasn’t the type to get nervous, excited yes, but she was a being of instinct. She had this.

She visualized the routine. A flip, a dip, bridge kick over… flip, slow down, flash a smile for the judges.

The world is quiet and dark inside her, a fluttering pulse in her fingertips and toes, her body stretched and begging to move.

Her team gives her a wash of compliments and encouragement, she gives them a thumbs up and makes her way to the floor. She catches Anya’s eye as she goes:

Eyes like opening violets, red of a bleeding-tyrant flag behind her, hands like doves. Abby wasn’t the type to get nervous, but her heart speeds up.

Her head jerks to back to attention as her feet hit the padded floor of the mat, it was time. The crowd grows hushed, she positions her arms above her head, wide and confident.

The music begins, she relaxes and throws herself into the first front layout.

The crowd whoops, she twirls, the lights flare above her like the eye of God, and God is she smiling.

There was nothing like it in the world.

Dip, handstand, handspring, she flies.

/////

Abby sticks her landing and struts off the mats, hands clapping behind her. She treks to get a water and waves at the fans, waiting for her results.

Someone approaches her before anyone else, “Good job solnyshko.”

Her eyes flare over to Anya, “thanks.” She grins with all her teeth, “I practice.”  
  
She waits for Anya to be dwarfed by her, a resentment or bitterness showing behind fake compliments and back pats.

“True competition.” Anya says simply. Her face is blank, calm.

“It is.” Abigail nods curiously.

“I am happy.”  
  
Before Abby can respond and ask if by ‘happy’ she meant ‘murderous,’ because honestly those emotions look the same on her face, people around her are cheering. Her scores were up. She jumps up and down, yelling she thinks. Nines, a ten, they were round and beautiful letters.

//////

Abby found out latter Anya was calling her ‘small sun,’ a small hot sun, which was much more endearing than she would have guessed. Solnyshko.

However, if Abby was the sun, Anya was the ocean, a frozen sea that moved on breathless aching currents.

Both vast and powerful, but only one could burn through or extinguish the other.

Boneless, beautiful, Anya tumbled like a dancer, a true Russian ballerina who knew every inch of her body and tuned it like a finely bred instrument.

If Abby was reckless and loud, her dance was sweet and tragic, the dance of decay and rise, dark hours that bred mettle and bird songs.

Abby’s eyes were misting up before the routine was even up. Anya finishes with an Arabian flip. The crowd goes wild.

Abby didn’t even look up at the scoreboard when Anya finished. She already knew. She was already readying herself for consolation glances and whispers of ‘next time. Next time you’ll get ‘em tiger.’

She smiles through the evening. Like a _diplomat_.

////

Abby is at a party, she never went to the Olympic parties, not in all four nights she had been there.

They smelled like booze and sweat and sex, and people in the thralls of victory and loss, their greatest accomplishments or defeats. Adrenaline and everyone around them with bodies like Gods and no where to go.

She was told Olympic parties were like nothing in the world, the one in Canada had run out of condoms.

Abby sips some nameless mixed drink and stares off into space.

“How old are you pretty girl?” A German accent addresses her.

She looks up at him, blinking through her eyelashes.

“16.” Everything feels unreal, her fingers grip at the red cup.

“Oh?” His tiger eyes gleam at her, “you know, I’ve heard a lot about sixteen, let me tell you a secret about getting through,”  
  
Abby feels like maybe she should punch him, but her limbs were stones and graves at that moment, she leans in.

“You have somewhere to be,” the man jumps, a tall woman bends into his personal space, “no?”

“Um,” he glances at her, rightly weirded out.

“You have somewhere to be.” She repeats and looks around, “get another drink, yeah?”  
  
“Better go.” Abigail murmurs into her beer-schnapps-whiskey brew.

The man backs up, obviously dumbfounded at being forced out, he stalks off. Anya watches him go, hard and cold, then turns back to Abby.

“So, this is your first Olympics, solnyshko?”

“…” She nods, not meeting her eye.

“Mine too. Seventeen, they say it is good for my age.”  
  
“You,” she chokes on her tongue, “you did well.”  
  
“Are you sad?” She asks with surprising depth.

Abigail presses herself closer to the tall girl, “I am…” she gulps, “so jealous!” She jumps up and down, grabs at the scruff of Anya’s shirt, she pulls the woman all six inches down.

“How did you do it? The last,” she gestures with her fingers at the flip, “it is too amazing!”

Anya laughs, laughs wholeheartedly, with her entire body shaking.

“Come ooonn, An',” Abby whines as Anya chuckles. “You gotta help me out. We’ll be better rivals then.” She offers.

“An'?”

“You gave me a nickname. And I found out what sol-ensh-co is, and I guess it _is_ kind of cute.” She blushes.

“Like you, solnyshko.”

“Why the sun?”  
  
“Hot,” Anya grabs her hand, “and bright.” She pushes Abby’s hair behind one of her ears.

“Yeah, well,” she covers her hand with her own, “you are very cold. Like a refrigerator, geez.”  
  
“Yet, I still win!” She crows, her emotions on her sleeve very briefly.

Abby looks down at her shoes, “next time…we’ll get you. And we’ll listen to my song.”  
  
Anya frowns, frowns for once. “Bombs, eh, bursting in air?” It was a question.

“Yeah!” Abby lights up like the fourth of July, “gave proof to through the night that our flag was still there.” She sings haphazardly, the next verses herself and then Anya’s deep, salted voice joins in.

She forces her to learn the jumbled Soviet anthem next, a kind of sacrilege Abby can feel in her bones. Thank God journalists were banned from these.

They sing and soon are laughing deep into the night, new drinks in their hands and a flush on their faces. Several more athletes approach but Anya presses them all away. She didn’t mind, Anya was enough right then.

Abby was giggling, “I can’t believe you kicked him in the face.”  
  
“Dah. It was, eh, bad, bad, bad.”

Abby is holding her sides, “in the middle of round!” She wipes her eye and then settles down, “you know for a Ruskie from commie land, you aren’t so bad.” She slides next to her on the couch and the larger arm covers her shoulders.

“You are much like I thought you would be.”

Abby blinks up her, “yeah?”

She nods solemnly, and then sniffs, “arrogant.”

Abby pushes on her side, “oh come on!”

She holds her hands up, “joking. I read about you too.”

That made Abby sit up straighter and clear her blurry mind. “For real?” She loved it. “What, hem,” she cleared her throat to sound less silver-toned, “what did it say? What did you expect…” _of me?_

Anya taps her chin like she did when she was thinking, she pulls Abby closer to her, “you won’t be mad?” She lilts.

Abby shakes her head, “tell me.”  
  
“Tell what?” She was forcing her to say it out loud like a begging dog. Luckily, Abby’s pride was flexible right then.

“What you expected!”

Anya grabbed her chin, “someone worth competing with.” And then she kissed her. It was small and shy, like a stolen prayer from preacher’s lips. 

Anya withdrew quickly, like it never happened, and then smoothed her hair like a preening nervous bird as she looked away.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Abby wasn’t good at subtle. She could have yelled or protested or pointed out other flaw with this. “They did not wright that in a magazine."

Anya gives another surprised laugh, a genuine one, Abby is smiling too, it is such a pretty sound.

She rashly grabs Anya's face, in the thralls of the night and the noise and the buzz, she presses her mouth to the other girls bow-shaped lips, delicate and high-pressured. They kiss again.

Eyes like violets, meeting her own blue irises, and hands like doves threading through her hair and arms like swans snaking behind her back.

Strangers whisper around them like the hiss of snakes and she dives deeper into the chill of Anya’s skin and heat of her mouth, ignoring them.

It tastes like a subtle slow burn and her heart speeds through her throat. She kisses until she is breathless and Anya presses her deeper into the couch.

The world blurs until it’s just skin and touch and smell of snow, she’s biting her neck and pressing her fingers against her hips.

“Let’s,” she huffs, “go to the back.”

They drag themselves into a back room, dark and private before throwing themselves on each other. Hair pulling, scratches little breathy grunts and each other’s names chasing their pants and groans.

“Solnyshko, solnyshko,” she says over and over again between kisses. The small sun.

Abby leans into it.

They come together on top of a small bed covered in discarded coats. 

//////

The last time Abby sees Anya it is leaving the stadium, she’s waving at her, waving good bye like a bored-yet-attentive royal, pleasantly.

Abby waves back, not knowing how to feel. The pure red and yellow floats behind Anya and her own stars and stripes is pasted above her head.

Anya mouths something at her. She knows what it says.

‘See you in four years.’

Her head is heavy with two silver medals, she grits her teeth and hold her head higher.

‘See you on the podium.’ Is all she mouths back, though she’s not sure if that’s what she meant.

**Author's Note:**

> from my tumblr insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com


End file.
